ANN started off talking about its recent columns. In March, premiered is a new column called "The Click" written by Brian Hanson (who was also present at the panel) which now runs every Friday. “RIGHT TURN ONLY!!” written by Carlo Santo has recently came back also. New columns that are being planned include a cosplay and fanart column. Eventually, what ANN plans to do is to have a column for everyday of the week.

Coming up soon on ANN is an interview with Hyde. ANN is the only anime press in North America to get a one on one interview with Hyde. During his stay in the US, Hyde was only interviewed by three press outlets (MTV, a Japanese television station, and Anime News Network).

ANN soon plans to redesign its site. Functions will be the same but the layout will be different in hopes of making ANN easier to navigate and use. A preview version is expected to be available within seven days or so and ANN hopes to have its “new look” up in about a month.

In February and March, ANN held a contest called “Naruto Build-a-Ninja Sweepstakes” which was one of ANN's biggest contests ever and had around 7,500 entries. In September, ANN plans to have a similar contest called “Naruto Director's Chair” in which contestants will construct a poster for a hypothetical Naruto movie. Prizes will include the second Naruto Gamecube game as well as other swag.

Later this year, ANN will be running a contest where the grand prize will include a trip to Japan. Total prize value will be about $10,000. The winner of the contest will get the title of “North America's biggest otaku”, meaning the person who knows and understands the most about anime. The winner will be decided by an extremely difficult exam that will cover all aspects of anime and manga fandom. The exam will not cover unlicensed anime too new to have been featured in North American anime magazines..

As many people already know Answerman (aka. Zac Bertschy) has been getting a lot of questions asking how to get their anime idea made into an actual anime. Well, although still in its planning stages, in the summer of 2007, ANN plans to run a contest with a major anime company to give people a feeling of what it is like to get your own anime idea made. Possibilities may even include getting some actual animation made, but it is still too early to be sure of this.

Travel back in time (and maybe have your gender swapped) to seven different periods of Japanese history, all from the comfort of your couch.― The history of Japanese civilization is expansive, predating the Common Era by 10,000 years (the Jomon period). There's much more ground to cover compared to what kids get in U.S. history classes in high school, which rarely cover anything before the Boston T...

Junji Ito's death-stench horror gets the deluxe treatment with a new hardcover omnibus, but the subject matter might not work for everyone.― Junji Ito is inarguably one of the masters of horror manga, utilizing both horror (physical revulsion) and terror (psychological reaction) to create gut-churning tales of the world gone mad. To a degree, he carries this out in his two-volume series Gyo from 200...

Voice actor/director/professional Dungeons & Dragons player Liam O'Brien returns to the podcast after a 5-year hiatus to discuss his roles in Fate/Zero and Sailor Moon, along with the landscape for anime voice acting now and what it's like to be Gollum.― ANNCast Episode 234: Podcastoes O'Brien Get the Flash Player to see this player. Voice actor/director/professional Dungeons & Dragons player Liam ...

If you went to an anime convention this summer or have used the internet lately, you may notice anime fans seem to have fallen in love with Steven Universe. Why? Because the show loves them right back.― If you've been to an anime convention in the past year, you've probably seen colorful, gem-studded cosplay like this filling the hallways. Photo credit links: top left, top right, bottom left, bottom...

If you've got questions for the director of the high-flying fantasy series The Pilot's Love Song, we've potentially got answers for you!― We've been given the opportunity to interview The Pilot's Love Song director Toshimasa Suzuki, and we need your help! NISA, who will be releasing the fantasy action drama The Pilot's Love Song on bluray September 22nd, asked for fan questions for Mr. Suzuki, whos...

Bee-Train's 2001 girls-with-guns classic returns on Blu-Ray, and holds up surprisingly well, despite some mediocre animation.― Not all older series deserve the Blu-Ray treatment. For some it is because the show just isn't as iconic as people might like to think, while for others it's because the quality was never BD worthy in the first place. Noir, fortunately, does hold up well enough that its tran...

Egypt Arc is JoJo in peak condition, as memorable and engaging an adventure as you could hope for. JoJo's Bizarre Adventure is back.― When we last left our heroes, they'd just arrived on the shores of Egypt, escaping the literal jaws of defeat in order to finally save Jotaro's mother. The journey there had been a lengthy and sometimes inconsistent one, with their various adventures indeed being plen...

The creator of the hit manga, recently adapted into a popular anime series, talks about her inspirations, how she got her start, and what it's like to watch your manga become a TV show.― As you might guess from the story, the main character of the story is a high school roughneck named Ryu Yamada. Yamada meets cute, quiet, and studious Urara Shiraishi, who is his complete opposite in almost every wa...